Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Thomas Hood. 17981845647. Autumn
I SAW old Autumn in the misty morn | |
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening | |
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing | |
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, | |
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— | 5 |
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright | |
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, | |
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. | |
Where are the songs of Summer?—With the sun, | |
Oping the dusky eyelids of the south, | 10 |
Till shade and silence waken up as one, | |
And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. | |
Where are the merry birds?—Away, away, | |
On panting wings through the inclement skies, | |
Lest owls should prey | 15 |
Undazzled at noonday, | |
And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. | |
Where are the blooms of Summer?—In the west, | |
Blushing their last to the last sunny hours, | |
When the mild Eve by sudden Night is prest | 20 |
Like tearful Proserpine, snatch’d from her flow’rs | |
To a most gloomy breast. | |
Where is the pride of Summer,—the green prime,— | |
The many, many leaves all twinkling?—Three | |
On the moss’d elm; three on the naked lime | 25 |
Trembling,—and one upon the old oak-tree! | |
Where is the Dryad’s immortality?— | |
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew, | |
Or wearing the long gloomy Winter through | |
In the smooth holly’s green eternity. | 30 |
The squirrel gloats on his accomplish’d hoard, | |
The ants have brimm’d their garners with ripe grain, | |
And honey bees have stored | |
The sweets of Summer in their luscious cells; | |
The swallows all have wing’d across the main; | 35 |
But here the Autumn melancholy dwells, | |
And sighs her tearful spells | |
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. | |
Alone, alone, | |
Upon a mossy stone, | 40 |
She sits and reckons up the dead and gone | |
With the last leaves for a love-rosary, | |
Whilst all the wither’d world looks drearily, | |
Like a dim picture of the drownèd past | |
In the hush’d mind’s mysterious far away, | 45 |
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last | |
Into that distance, gray upon the gray. | |
O go and sit with her, and be o’ershaded | |
Under the languid downfall of her hair: | |
She wears a coronal of flowers faded | 50 |
Upon her forehead, and a face of care;— | |
There is enough of wither’d everywhere | |
To make her bower,—and enough of gloom; | |
There is enough of sadness to invite, | |
If only for the rose that died, whose doom | 55 |
Is Beauty’s,—she that with the living bloom | |
Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light: | |
There is enough of sorrowing, and quite | |
Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear,— | |
Enough of chilly droppings for her bowl; | 60 |
Enough of fear and shadowy despair, | |
To frame her cloudy prison for the soul! |